Competition for Partners: Strategic Games in Wholesale International Roaming

High international roaming prices have puzzled and occupied analysts and regulators for quite a time. While on the retail side the problem seems to be well understood, and the high margins can be justified using Ramsey pricing logic, on the wholesale side the picture is not so clear. Recent contributions find reasons for regulation based on the existence of random traffic and on the bilateral nature of the wholesale deals, which raise the equilibrium prices even when operators can choose a preferred network. This paper intends to investigate whether or not those concerns are justified. This is done by modelling the bilateral roaming negotiations and extending the current models, assuming that home operators (the ones with a retail contract with the customer in its country of residence) can decide not only their preferred network in each visited country, but also the distribution of their outbound traffic among the visited operators. We find that when traffic steering is perfect the wholesale market is competitive, and that the lower prices are passed on to end users through competition for retail customers. The bilateral nature of international roaming wholesale deals is actually an additional source of competition on the retail market for mobile services because the roaming out traffic (the traffic of an operator's retail customers abroad) and the roaming in traffic (the traffic of foreign customers that an operator is able to attract) are directly linked. --

A Proposal of a Synthetic Indicator to Measure Poverty Intensity, With an Application to EU-15 Countries

This paper deals with the proposal of a synthetic indicator to measure intensity of poverty. So, whereas incidence of poverty can be clearly measured using the headcount ratio indicator, according to Sen (1976) dimensions of poverty, the choice of a better intensity poverty measure is still an open question to resolve. Thus, in this paper, a new procedure to obtain a synthetic indicator from a set of well-performed poverty intensity indices as a start is proposed, using an adaptation of Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Conditions needed to make longitudinal comparisons possible are studied and properties of these synthetic indicators will also be analyzed, connected to TIP curves as well. As an illustration, this paper analyzes the evolution of poverty in the 15 countries of E.U., whose household income data are available through the information contained in the European Community Household Panel (ECPH). This analysis allows static and dynamic comparisons, related to the period from 1993 to 2000. Furthermore, the determination of groups of countries according to their characteristics in poverty will be accomplished.Economic Poverty, TIP’s poverty curves, Poverty in EU countries, PHOGUE.

Recent evolution of poverty in the European countries

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of poverty in the 15 countries of E.U., whose household income data is available through the information contained in the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Several indicators have been proposed in economic literature for measuring poverty, but they may produce different orderings when cases are compared. In this work, a set of poverty one-dimensional indicators are chosen, which best verify some desirable properties. A modification of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is proposed to calculate synthetic cross-sectional measures of poverty using this set of indicators. In order to obtain comparable values throughout time, in addition to cross-sectional sense, joint consideration of single poverty indicators is proposed, independently of their temporary period of reference. Therefore, applying common space analysis to these cross-sectional synthetic measures, a common frame of comparison and a homogeneous weighting structure are obtained, which are stable throughout time. This powerful tool allows static as well as dynamic comparisons, among the EU countries. Furthermore, the determination of groups of countries according to their characteristics in poverty will be accomplished.

Mitos y bulos de la alimentación

La alimentación y la nutrición son temas de actualidad integrados en las conversaciones de la sociedad. El problema reside en la existencia de mucha información falsa, que recibe el nombre de mito y que la población no sabe diferenciar de la que es veraz. Estos mitos llegan a través de los medios de comunicación, que bombardean a base de información que muchas veces no presenta ninguna base científica, sino que más bien buscan vender un producto haciéndolo más atractivo. También son trasmitidos de generación en generación, provocando que se asienten en sus culturas y sea más complicada su eliminación. El profesional sanitario es uno de los grandes artífices del mantenimiento de estos mitos, pues no presenta los suficientes conocimientos sobre el tema de la nutrición. Será fundamental formar de manera correcta al personal sanitario, para que ellos puedan transmitir la información correcta al resto de la población y sean capaces de luchar contra los mitos y poder eliminarlos.Grado en Enfermerí